The Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection is
a priceless accumulation of centuries-old Hebrew manuscript
material and Judaica, recovered from the Cairo Genizah in
1896-97. It has occupied a place of honour among the
literary treasures of the University of Cambridge for more
than a century and is housed at Cambridge University
Library.

The Collection was the gift in 1898 of the
noted scholar Dr Solomon Schechter -
who later became President of the Jewish Theological
Seminary of America - and his friend and patron, Dr Charles
Taylor, Master of St. John's College, Cambridge.

In 1896 Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Gibson showed some leaves of a Hebrew manuscript which they had
purchased in the Middle East to Schechter, then Reader in
Talmudic and Rabbinic literature at Cambridge. He then
conceived the idea of bringing to the University the
precious manuscript material he suspected could be found in
the Genizah (depository for worn-out copies of sacred
Jewish writings) of the thousand-year-old Ben Ezra Synagogue of Fostat (Old
Cairo). Taylor, an enthusiastic student of Hebrew, joined
him in his effort to add to the knowledge of Jews and
Judaism, and made it financially possible out of his own
means.

In a now famous expedition, Schechter
journeyed to Cairo and secured the approval of the
Synagogue authorities to 'empty' the Genizah. He chose what
seemed to be its most promising material and sent it on to
England for scholarly study. Although some fragments had
already found their way elsewhere his haul was destined to
become by far the most important.

The 140,000 fragments of documents and
texts now at Cambridge are mainly in manuscript, many of
them on vellum. They include a wide variety of secular as
well as religious material and are written in several
languages. Although they were gathered in less than two
months it has taken over a century to preserve, classify
and house the greater part of them in a way that makes them
easily available for study - and much still remains to
be done.

Yet in these hundred years the
Taylor-Schechter Collection has already served to usher in
a whole new era of Jewish learning. There is hardly an area
of Hebrew and Jewish studies that has not been
revolutionized by findings that originated in the Genizah
Collection.

Taken together, the Collection's fragments
make up a literature of the sacred, the heretical and the
mundane which reaches back to Biblical times and extends
forward to the 19th century

The sacred is represented in splendid
quantity and variety by thousands of fragments of Bible,
Talmud, Midrash, Law and Liturgy, reflecting many periods
of Jewish thought and custom.

Among the many lost Hebrew books recovered
from among the fragments is the original version of the Wisdom of Ben Sira, a work
dating from the second century BCE. Jewish doubt about just
how sacred this book was had led to its exclusion from the
Hebrew Bible and eventually to the loss of its Hebrew text.
But the Genizah ensured that it was not lost for ever by
preserving a 10th century copy.

The heretical is present in the writings of
various dissident Jewish sects, compositions probably
banished to the Genizah whenever they appeared in Old
Cairo. Nearly forty years before the momentous discovery of
the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, Schechter called attention to
just such a group, the unknown religious brotherhood we now
know produced the Scrolls, when he published their story in
his 'Fragments of a Zadokite Work', the first volume of his Documents of Jewish Sectaries. His research was
based on the analysis of certain unique pieces he had found
in the Collection, and created a sensation in its own time.
The 'Zadokite' fragments have
since been referred to as 'The First Dead Sea Scroll'.

But the Collection's considerable quantity
of the ordinary literature of life - mundane legal papers,
business correspondence, medical prescriptions, musical
notations, illuminated pages, marriage contracts,
children's school books and everyday letters - has also
proved to be of remarkable value for research purposes.
Individual pieces of a secular nature have given us
eye-witness accounts of the Crusader conquest of the Holy
Land, have confirmed the 8th century conversion of the
Khazars to Judaism and have presented us with some of the
oldest known texts of Yiddish (Judaeo-German).

Overall, the results of work on the Genizah
Collection can be summed up as follows:

It has provided us with detailed accounts of the
social, economic and religious activity of the vibrant
Near Eastern Jewish communities of the 11th-13th
centuries.

It has shown us how Jewish law developed during the
Geonic period (7th-11th centuries) when the heads of the
Babylonian academies were called upon to make rulings for
Jews throughout the Islamic Empire.

It has deepened our knowledge of famous scholars,
including Saadia (882-942), Maimonides (1135-1204) and Yehuda Halevi (1075-1141),
sometimes bringing to light texts in the handwriting of
such great men.

It has made possible the restoration and collation of
important early texts of the Midrash and the Talmud,
especially the Jerusalem Talmud, otherwise known only in
later corrupt versions.

It has given us new insights into the way that Hebrew
was pronounced and its grammar understood by the leading
Jewish linguists of Eretz Yisrael and Babylonia more than
a thousand years ago.

It has led to the recovery of Greek and Syriac texts
- one of them a 6th century version of the translation of
the Bible into Greek by Aquila, contemporary of Rabbi
Akiva. This has been achieved through a close examination
of 'palimpsests' - manuscripts on vellum in which the
original writing was scraped away and inscribed with a
fresh text, often Hebrew.

It has made possible the reconstruction of synagogue
customs and rites in ancient Palestine and
Babylonia.

It has led to the rediscovery of a large proportion
of the important Hebrew poetry of medieval Spain and
Provence.

It has ushered in a new era of language studies
through the publication of its important Judaeo-Arabic
material (Arabic written in Hebrew characters and once
the lingua franca of Jews under Islamic
rule).

It has produced rare examples of Jewish artistic,
musical and scientific efforts in the 11th and 12th
centuries.

Jacob Mann of the Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati,
who uncovered the history of the Jews of Egypt and
Palestine under the Fatimid Caliphs (10th-12th
centuries).

Louis Ginzberg of the Jewish Theological Seminary,
New York, collector and editor of Talmud and Midrash
texts and Geonic Responsa.

Israel Davidson of the same Seminary, who began the
systematic recovery of much of Jewish liturgical
poetry.

Simcha Assaf of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem,
who, with his colleague, David Baneth, built up a picture
of Jewish activity in the Mediterranean in the days of
Islamic rule on the basis of Rabbinic Responsa.

Menahem Zulay of the Schocken Institute, Jerusalem,
who recovered and edited several hundred compositions of
the legendary 6th century liturgical poet Yannai.

Paul Kahle of Bonn and Oxford, who enlarged our
understanding of the development of Hebrew through his
investigations into the Babylonian and Palestinian
systems of pointing Hebrew.

More recent scholars have also, in the
course of their important research, lent a hand with the
sorting of unclassified parts of the Collection. They have
sought no more reward for their efforts than the privilege
of spending fascinating hours puzzling over the secrets of
each tantalizing fragment. In this way each of them has
added to our knowledge of the field in which he is
expert.

Shelomo Dov Goitein and a whole school of
scholars, beginning with Norman Golb, most of whom had had
the benefit of his training and advice, rewrote the history
of Jews in Arab lands in the Middle Ages. Alexander
Scheiber and Shalom Spiegel illuminated the dark corners of
medieval Hebrew literature, while Naphtali Wieder brought
to light the earliest versions of the Jewish prayer-book
and Jacob Teicher, then Lecturer in Rabbinics at Cambridge,
did similar groundwork for the first printed Hebraica.
Michael Klein carefully described many of the fragments of
Targum.

Missing links in the history of talmudic
study were located by Shraga Abramson and similar lacunae
in Hebrew grammar and lexicography were made good by
Nehemiah Allony and in Bible commentary by Moshe Zucker.
Schirmann and other students of liturgical poetry continued
the work they had earlier commenced, and Shelomo Morag and
Alejandro Diez-Macho updated and expanded Kahle's
pioneering efforts in masoretic studies.

Among more contemporary scholars it is no
longer possible even to attempt to list the hundreds
outside Cambridge University Library whose research is
heavily dependent on the material that Schechter brought
from Cairo.

Ezra Fleischer and Joseph Yahalom in
liturgy and poetry; Israel Yeivin, Ilan Eldar, E. J. Revell
and Geoffrey Khan in Masorah; Jacob Sussmann, Menahem
Kahana, Robert Brody, and Neil Danzig in Talmud; Joshua
Blau, Haggai Ben-Shammai and Simon Hopkins in
Judaeo-Arabic; Malachi Beit-Arié and Colette Sirat in
palaeography; Moshe Gil, Menahem Ben-Sasson and Mark R.
Cohen in medieval Jewish history; Mordechai Friedman on
Palestinian marriage documents and Joel Kraemer on women's
correspondence; Shaul Shaked and Peter Schäfer on material
relating to magic; Paul Fenton on Jewish mysticism; Abraham
David on sixteenth-century Palestinian Jewry and Eleazar
Gutwirth on Judaeo-Spanish - these scholars have been among
the most active and industrious, but the list could be
greatly multiplied.

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and
related scholarly developments in Israel and the Bible
lands have helped to bring about a renewed interest in
Jewish studies and study resources. The Taylor-Schechter
Genizah Research Unit, established in 1974, is helping to
serve this interest through a new, comprehensive programme
designed to meet all the Collection's various needs.